The architects may need to move quickly, because Mayor Sam Adams has expressed his desire to see a major redevelopment of the Rose Quarter begin in the next couple of years.

“Now is the time for action,” Adams said earlier this week, as he announced that the city will partner with the Trail Blazers and a Baltimore development company, Cordish Co. The redevelopment of the Rose Quarter would mean tearing down the coliseum, replacing it with a baseball stadium, and tearing down and replacing the Blazers’ offices with an “entertainment district,” called Live!, developed by Cordish and based on a format that Cordish has used in other cities such as Kansas City.

The mayor said he has seen “very little action” over the years toward redeveloping the Rose Quarter. He said he wants to move quickly by passing a development agreement with the Blazers and Merritt Paulson, who plans to bring Major League Soccer to PGE Park beginning 2011. “We do not lack plans; we lack action,” Adams said.

Local architects worry the city is moving too fast.

“I wouldn’t want the coliseum to be a casualty of convenience,” said architect and preservationist Paul Falsetto of Carleton Hart Architecture, who serves on the Historic Resources Committee of the American Institute of Architects, Portland.

“I understand the imperative,” he said, referring to the city’s drive to get the redevelopment started. “It’s time to do the right thing, to do the Portland thing – not the time to just do something.”

What has local architects objecting to razing the coliseum is both its usefulness and its historic significance.

“It has the hand of a master, somebody of high talent involved in its design,” he said. “It’s one of the best examples of international modernist styles in the city. If the curtains are down,” he said, referring to the curtains around the seating bowl, “you can be watching a game, look 90 degrees over your shoulder and see the Willamette River. There’s something wholly Portland about that.”

SOM came to Portland in the early 1950s, and filled a large void left by Pietro Belluschi, who moved to be dean of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SOM quickly began snapping up large commissions, including the Standard Plaza Building, Standard Insurance Center and the Hilton Hotel.

Structurally, the coliseum was groundbreaking for its use of four cruciform-shaped, 70-foot-high reinforced concrete columns supporting steel trusses for the roof. In addition, the concrete seating bowl is freestanding within the walls.

Adams said the new entertainment district and baseball stadium would be built to sustainable building standards.

Falsetto said it’s usually not sustainable to tear down a good building.

“The idea is that the most sustainable building is the one that’s never built and the second-most sustainable building is the one that already exists,” he said.

“Portland needs to take responsibility as a municipality and come up with the best plan for all of us,” he said. “Putting one big venue next to another venue and creating people spaces around it – that’s a big challenge.”

Meijer said he hopes to meet with Portland City Council members to ask them to postpone making a decision, slated for April 22, on the development proposal.

Falsetto said it is unclear whether inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places would be enough to prevent the city from demolishing the coliseum. He said he thought the building would be a good candidate for the national register. “Most all preservation folks think this building is national register eligible,” he said.